It seems to me that there are three political/peace processes jostling
for primacy here. The first is the ‘sure it’s better than it used to be’
process.

In other words it doesn’t matter how shambolic the exercise of
government may be, or how removed it is from the public it is supposed
to serve, it’s still deemed better than the bloodshed that preceded it.

At least that’s what the politicians tell us. Indeed it has become their
stock response when anyone points out that the emperor is both naked and
frozen to the spot.

The second is the illusion process, involving smoke, mirrors,
sleight-of-hand, dead white rabbits and squashed doves.

The central feature of this one, though, is a never-ending requirement
from Robinson and McGuinness to blame the media for spoiling the
illusion by revealing that it’s all an act - and not even a particularly
good act.

Robinson was at it again last week in west Belfast, giving newspapers a
roughing-up for complaining about the flaws in the system, yet failing
to mention that he was the one writing articles last autumn saying that
the institutions were “not fit for purpose” and close to collapse. Sinn
Fein didn’t disagree with his analysis.

And the third is the stick-to-what-we-do-best process, in which the
parties continue to knock 10 bells out of each other, pick at scabs,
rerun old battles and play entirely to their own galleries.

This one, of course, is the easiest process, because it is the real
process. They really can’t stand each other. They really don’t want to
work together (unless it is in the run-up to a White House junket or
involves the whiff of cash from someone - and they’re not really fussy
whom) and they really don’t want to share, let alone build a united
agenda.

If they did want to share, then we would have seen some sort of evidence
of it from the nature of the relationship between the DUP and Sinn Fein
since May 2007.

But that relationship has always been fractious. We saw it again on
Tuesday when Sammy Wilson accused Sinn Fein’s Megan Fearon of being like
the brainwashed teenage girls who join ISIS, after she complained about
a motion condemning the naming of a play park after Raymond McCreesh.

This is easy stuff. It doesn’t require any preparation or rehearsal.
It’s just a matter of rising from your seat and baiting (“ah, sure it’s
better than beating them” I can hear Pollyanna chirrup) each other. It’s
lazy politics. It’s politics for dummies. It’s politics for people who
can see no further than their own self-imposed limitations.

And it’s clearly what we’re going to get when the 11 new super-councils
roll out in a few weeks time - April 1, for good measure. The ones with
a nationalist majority will be trying to create ‘neutral’ space by
banning poppies and writing the ban notices in Irish: while the
unionists will want flags and flat-earth creationism. You thought one
Stormont was bad? Just wait until you get 11 mini Stormonts, complete
with their bite-sized lunacies and Balkanising planning policies. Better
still, these mini-me structures will be dominated by Sinn Fein and the
DUP and have greater powers than local government has had for almost 50
years.

The last councils were mostly restricted to bogs, dogs, bins and burials
because the general assumption was that they weren’t ready to deal with
the really big stuff.

Well, they’re still not ready to deal with it, yet they’ve been given
the power. And given that power by the two parties who can’t stand the
sight of each other.

What could go wrong?

I’ll leave you to work that out for yourselves.

Anyway, back to problem of the jostling processes. None of them are
working. Two are based on self-serving delusion or illusion and the
third is just the political version of ‘stitch and bitch’.

Robinson and McGuinness boast of the stability at the heart of whatever
this process actually is, but I don’t see how you have stability in a
system where compromise, cooperation and consensus are in such short
supply and where neutral spaces are regarded as places to be captured
and conquered.

I don’t deny that it’s better than it used to be. I don’t deny that the
executive has chalked up some successes. But I am genuinely concerned
with the growing opinion of far too many people that what we have is as
good as it gets. That would be the worst process of all.

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